"Many people are looking to Ubuntu to be something that it is not: A mass market ready operating system designed to work with the same level of compatibility as Microsoft Windows. Where people get confused is in believing that if Ubuntu, king of the Linux distros, is not able to take the marketplace by storm, then something must be broken with desktop Linux. In this article, I'll explain what it will take to dethrone the mighty Ubuntu and gain a market share so large that it will eclipse anything seen by Ubuntu to date." More here.
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Member since:2005-09-13
Member since:2005-11-12
"preferences" and "administration" sounds similar. Novice users might not understand the difference. They should be called "System settings" and "Desktop settings" or something. Though it's not a big deal and I personaly thinks it's better to use the gnome tools like ubuntu than som separate control panel application.
Member since:2006-01-02
Nothing is complicated in that, except things aren't there that should be, and much of what is there does not work. Some works somewhat, but not enough.
Trying to get ctrl-alt-esc to run xkill has been a final straw for me. Why are there four GUI keyboard shortcut apps? Why don't changes in any of them actually work? Why can't the simple GTK-based one actually work like its help claims it does?
XFCE and KDE's are set for xkill, the little GTK-based on won't allow me to remove the ctrl-alt-esc shortcut, even though the help says I can, and the other one that looks more like it's from Gnome proper will let me try, but it doesn't work.
At least with a more basic distro I know exactly what I put in that is controlling that stuff. If Ubuntu wants to make it better, they need to have a single place to do those things, that kicks off an 'apply' script that then does it for every DE...and that works.
Trying to get sound working right also was not fun, nor getting SMP working (I changed hardware), nor dealing with each DE or FM having its own "trash," but also not being able to easily set a single system-wide FM to use, it took a reinstall to get font sizes and AA working right across toolkits...ugh.
The core Linux bits, and the separate application bits, work great, but what's trying to glue it all together is not working well. It's just Ubuntu. Some parts will get better wit each release, some parts worse. It's a great display of the capability of the modern Linux desktop, but not something I'll be running regularly.
Dethroning Ubuntu is easy: use Ubuntu enough that you see it has a chair at the table like every other distro--it just looks fancier. Ubuntu 7.10 was the nail in MS' coffin for me, but I' going to use either Arch or SMGL.
Member since:
2006-09-10
If it's personal stuff go to preferences.
If it's system stuff go to administration.
What's so complicated about that?
[edited for typo]
Edited 2007-12-07 12:57